Red McCombs

[2] McCombs was born in rural Spur in Dickens County in West Texas, United States.

[7][needs update] McCombs attributed the construction of the HemisFair Arena as the essential development to the success of the San Antonio Spurs.

He contacted Lee Iacocca, then president of the Ford Motor Company, to seek funding for the arena to correspond with the 1968 World's Fair.

At first, Iacocca offered only $250,000 for the purchase of an art object, and he scolded McCombs and ridiculed San Antonio as "that little old dusty ass town of yours down there [with] no political or economic significance to the Ford Motor Company.

McCombs realized the importance of television to sports events and saw the opportunity to bring San Antonio to a national stage.

Under the McCombs administration, the Spurs had their first superstar in George Gervin, called "The Iceman", who was recruited from the Virginia Squires.

After an unsuccessful attempt to replace the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, McCombs sold the team to new (and current) owner Zygi Wilf before the 2005 NFL season.

McCombs had been unsuccessful in his attempts to convince the court to remove a key roadblock preventing his proposed development.

[14] In 2013, McCombs was found by the United States Supreme Court to have engaged in a sham tax avoidance transaction and was therefore liable for a valuation misstatement penalty.

[18] McCombs was a reformed alcoholic, who could "handle his social drinking" until the age of 48, when overcome with convulsions he went into a five-day coma at a medical facility in Houston.

McCombs said in a Christmas 2016 interview, "God was good to me and for whatever reason wanted me to live, because I was really dead when I left in 1975 to go to Houston on that medical plane.